[Air-L] open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals

[danah boyd]

I disagree with your claim that no one gives up power willingly.  I  
think that people do this all the time.  Not all power in all contexts  
is taken through acts of violence.  Theoretical debate aside, let's  
try an example close to our field.

The International Journal of Communications (IJOC) was launched last  
fall.  This journal is open-access, online-only.  It uses open journal  
systems for structure and is archived in a wide variety of ways to  
meet the needs of librarians and scholars.  The bandwidth and  
publishing costs are paid for by USC's Annenberg School.  All the  
editors, reviewers, and authors are unpaid. The heads editors are  
senior scholars who, from my POV, are pretty big names: Manuel  
Castells and Larry Gross.  The associate editors, book review editors,  
and advisory editors contain a pretty impressive list of senior  
scholars that I deeply respect (but your mileage may differ)  
including: Howard Becker, Yochai Benkler, Henry Jenkins, Steve Jones,  
and many more.  (I bet a bunch of them are on this list...)   I don't  
know if they left previous journals to do this one, but all of those  
people are painfully stretched thin which means that they're doing  
this because they believe in it.

This journal is brand new, having only two issues to date.  It's easy  
to be cynical and point out that most new journals crumble, but I  
think that this one has legs.  It's got big-name people with huge  
networks (necessary for conning people to review), a major sponsor,  
and a sustainable infrastructure.  They are staunchly committed to  
open-access and I can't imagine them changing their tune, especially  
given the intersection between their editors' work and politics.   
Since they are "published" by USC, they aren't at risk of being sold  
(unless UCLA executes a hostile take-over).

Why is this destined to fail?  Why shouldn't we be pushing to make  
this the top comm journal by submitting our best work there?

The only way that I can imagine that this project would fail would be  
if people fail to submit quality work.  Their success depends on the  
quality of what they publish.  That is in our control.  Don't we have  
a responsibility to embrace this endeavor and do everything in our  
power to help this amazing collection of senior scholars change the  
future of scholarship?

danah


PS.  I know that this example is not perfect... It's English-only,  
comm-centric, requires network connectivity for access, etc. etc.  But  
it's much better than the current model.


On Feb 8, 2008, at 1:37 PM, Christian Nelson wrote:

> We're still talking about open-source journals that would utilize
> some sort of reader rating system to make editorial decisions, right?
> Why would powerful academics leave the current set of journals, over
> which they have total editorial control, for journals over which they
> would have considerably less control, considering that journal
> article publication is the main source of academic capital for most
> scholars? No one ever gives up power willingly.
>
> On Feb 8, 2008, at 4:25 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> So yes, I agree: luring big names is part of what has to be done.
>> I just don't find that particularly daunting.
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